


Covered in the Colors

by Cobrilee



Series: Tumblr Ficlets [12]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Stiles is Derek's Anchor, character piece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-26 19:13:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10793013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cobrilee/pseuds/Cobrilee
Summary: He starts to feel something again. It’s a flicker, a tiny flame, but it lights something inside him that hasn’t been lit since he was sixteen years old.Erica and Isaac and Boyd, they help. They leave their own wounds, slice through him with their pain more deeply than claws can go, but they help. The flame grows.It’s ironic that the thing that turned his life to ashes is the thing that will bring it back.





	Covered in the Colors

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by Halsey's [Colors](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGulAZnnTKA), which made me think of Derek almost instantly. This is the first Derek-centric piece I've written and while I'm still first and foremost a Stiles girl, I really loved focusing on Derek for a change.

_ You’re ripped at every edge but you’re a masterpiece  
_ _ And now you’re tearing through the pages and the ink _

He feels a lot of things, but mostly he doesn’t feel at all. He’d call it numbness, but it has a sharp edge to it, a razor blade drawing thin lines of blood across his throat, choking him. He howls with it, with the nothing, but nobody hears him.

When he feels, it’s anger. It’s a cold, seething, burning rage. It’s a fierce need to protect. It’s desperation, don’t let them down, keep them alive, they need you, they can’t survive without you. It rips at him, tears through his guts, this need to look out for people who hate him. His atonement. 

His family died. Their family will live.

He wants, so much, so he doesn’t let himself want at all. He wants family, someone who cares. He wants love. He wants to feel something other than hopeless and empty and angry. He wants to be something other than a shell of a person who lives only because he has a mission.

He wants to be whole again.

Stiles and Scott, they help. They hate him, but they help. Jackson, he helps. Peter helps. They’re broken, like a collection of damaged and discarded toy soldiers someone picked up and put into position, still covered in dust, weapons snapped at the tips but at the ready despite it all. They walk into battle even when they don’t know where the fight is coming from, and their courage, their resilience, their refusal to bow to their fear, it helps.

He starts to feel something again. It’s a flicker, a tiny flame, but it lights something inside him that hasn’t been lit since he was sixteen years old.

Erica and Isaac and Boyd, they help. They leave their own wounds, slice through him with their pain more deeply than claws can go, but they help. The flame grows.

It’s ironic that the thing that turned his life to ashes is the thing that will bring it back.

__ Everything is gray  
_ His hair, his smoke, his dreams  
_ _ And now he’s so devoid of color he don’t know what it means_

He doesn’t know when Stiles becomes his anchor. He doesn’t know when he starts looking to this child, this stubborn, argumentative, courageous, defiant, loyal, passionate  _ child _ for the will he needs to remember he’s still alive. That he’s more than the wolf, more than a wild animal.

Maybe it’s when they spend two months looking for Erica and Boyd, and Derek is empty again, going through the motions. He worries for his pack, he worries for their safety and their ability to survive, but he’s hollow. They left him. He can’t hold on to anything; the gossamer threads of happiness eternally slip through his fingers. It’s an endless chase for something that will always elude him, and he’s tired.

But Stiles doesn’t leave him, doesn’t leave Boyd and Erica to their fate. He’s the fight that Derek can’t summon, not for himself. It’s his voice in Derek’s head, challenging him not to give in to the exhaustion that wraps itself around him like a python, squeezing so gently he doesn’t know he’s losing his breath and his faith.

Then Stiles is there, hand on Derek’s arm, shaking him, yelling at him, telling him he can’t give up, they’re out there, and they’ll find them. Derek is still exhausted, but he lets Stiles be his strength, and he pushes through. He keeps going, and when he stumbles, Stiles pulls him up again.

Stiles finds them, of course. It’s only right. Derek watches Erica throw her arms around Stiles’ neck, feels Boyd’s shoulders hunch and tremble under his hand, and breathes, for the first time in months. Stiles gives him the widest, most joyful grin, and something in Derek’s chest splinters. The flames lick through the cracks, seeping into his soul, warming him, and Derek is grateful. 

He doesn’t know Stiles is his anchor, but he knows he owes him everything.

__ Everything is blue  
_ His pills, his hands, his jeans  
_ _ And now I’m covered in the colors pulled apart at the seams_

The breaking point comes a week after Erica and Boyd return. Derek would like to say he’s happy, but he doesn’t remember what that even feels like, so he’s not sure that’s what this is. He’s content, maybe. 

Affection isn’t something he’s understood for nearly seven years. Even Laura stopped touching him after the fire. Both of them were so closed off that they didn’t know how to find solace in each other, and as the years passed it became their new normal. 

Apparently, it pisses Erica off. 

She yells at him one day for not even caring that they left, or that they came back after Stiles found them. She gets in his face and he stands there, unflinching, as she tells him that his inability to function like a human being is why they left in the first place. He refrains from remarking that he’s not, actually, a human being, and for that matter, neither is she. He thinks Stiles would be disappointed in him for not taking advantage of the opportunity for a good sarcastic rejoinder. 

It’s the immediate presence of Stiles in his mind, even as Erica continues to berate him harshly, that makes everything click. He watches impassively as she lashes out, Boyd and Isaac motionless behind her with twin looks of cautious concern, and when she’s done yelling, chest heaving and golden eyes flashing, he turns and walks away. He can hear her frustration, can smell her disappointment, but there’s only one place he can go.

Stiles doesn’t get home until late, but Derek is still waiting, sitting on the end of his bed. Predictably, Stiles jumps, flails backward, and snaps at Derek. “What the fuck are you doing here, you creeper?” he grumbles, patting his chest over his heart as he takes a dramatic breath. It’s rabbiting, but not so quickly as it used to, and not for long at all. He’s spent too much time with Derek over the last few months to be scared of him anymore. Derek thinks, he hopes, that they’re beyond that. He knows Stiles has somehow become his safe space. He’s the one holding him together when Derek doesn’t even know he’s ready to fall apart.

Derek opens his mouth, but the words choke him. He looks at Stiles, his breath quickening, his eyes wide, and Stiles’ own widen in response. “Dude, it’s okay. I got you.” And he does. Before Derek knows it, he’s in Stiles’ arms, his mouth buried against Stiles’ throat, and it idly crosses his mind that he doesn’t need to bend his head as far as he would have before.

Stiles’ arms band around him, holding him tightly while Derek fights to keep from fracturing. He realizes he’s trembling and doesn’t know when it started, only knows that he’s breathing Stiles in, his scent comforting and warm, threading through him and mending the cracks before they can break apart. Stiles’ hands are running soothingly over his back, and he doesn’t know when they got to this point where the affection, the comfort, feels natural, feels expected. He doesn’t know when they got to the point that Stiles is home.

He knows he’s broken. That’s been evident since the day he watched his life, his family, go up in flames. For the first time, he thinks that maybe being broken is the place where his life begins. 

_ You’re dripping like a saturated sunrise  
_ _ You’re spilling like an overflowing sink _


End file.
